City smells a rat, targets dangerous rodent poisons

More specifically, the city on Monday called for local businesses to pull from their shelves specific rat and mouse poisons that don’t comply with the latest Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

These particular poisons increase the risk of children accidentally being exposed to them and pose significant risks to non-targeted wildlife, like hawks, owls and squirrels, according to the EPA.

The federal agency in 2008 determined certain poisons pose an “unreasonable risk” and gave manufacturers until June 2011 to switch to safer products, city officials said. The EPA has begun regulatory action to ban those poisons, but that process can take years to complete, city officials said.

That’s “too long for us to wait,” Melanie Nutter, head of the city’s Department of the Environment, said in a statement. Hence a “Don’t Take the Bait!” campaign encouraging business to drop “rodenticides” from Reckitt-Benckiser Inc. makers of D-Con; Spectrum Group makers of Hot Shot and Rid-a-Rat; and Liphatech Inc. makers of Generation rodent control.

Ten companies with 87 combined retail outlets in the city, including Walgreens and Cole Hardware, have pledged to remove the poisons from their shelves, Nutter said.

Supervisor Malia Cohen plans to introduce a resolution at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday calling on the three manufacturers stop making those products.